LAST week we left Charlie, the amiable but repetitively unlucky Boxer, with multiple issues, on the operating table.

We had carefully monitored his heart murmur, respiratory rate and oxygen concentration throughout the procedure. His external testicle had been removed uneventfully. The testicle that had been abnormally retained inside his abdomen had been located and similarly dealt with.

His terribly pinched nostrils, a condition called stenotic nares, which is far too common in brachycephalic breeds, such as Boxers, French Bulldogs and Bulldogs, that made breathing so difficult and noisy for him, had been successfully surgically corrected by removal of a wedge of tissue from each side.

In essence, the job was done.

The anaesthetic was about to be turned off when a trickle of blood appeared at his left nostril. Given the vascular nature of this area, it’s not unusual and no real cause for alarm. Simply packing the nostril with a swab for a few minutes generally does the job. So that’s what we did. And the bleeding stopped.

A short while later, with his ability to breathe improved immeasurably, Charlie was returned to his hospital kennel, where the ward nurse kept a constant and careful eye on him. With his type of breed and anatomy, it is during the recovery period that problems can occur. But it wasn’t what we expected.

He sneezed once and the bleeding started again. A small professional crowd gathered. A nurse positioned his head on her knee. Another steadied him. I packed his nostril with a swab; a procedure he tolerated remarkably well for two reasons. First, he is lovely. Second, he could breathe happily through only one nostril. Surely, again, job done.

But no. Forty-five minutes later, with the packing still in place and a nurse with pins and needles in her legs, I was summoned from my consulting room because there was now a drip of blood from his scrotum. Then his abdominal wound began to ooze. And then there was another sneeze and blood was spattered everywhere. Pretty soon, it was all hands on deck to try and stop multiple haemorrhages, with a secondary cleaning team trying their best. It looked like we were losing him but the cause was not immediately clear.

I have talked about lungworm (Angiostrongylus vasorum) before. In our area, it is not a common condition but an in-house blood test quickly proved Charlie to be positive for the parasite and this explained his generalised bleeding.

It also served to remind me that regular monthly treatment with either a tablet or spot-on is required to prevent it. The parasite is acquired through the ingestion of snails and a study at Glasgow University Vet School showed that, remarkably, around 10 per cent of snails in our public parks are infected by Angiostrongylus.

The life cycle is complicated. Dogs ingest larvae by eating snails or their slime. These then migrate through the liver to the lungs. Adults develop, then mate and produce eggs, which hatch into larvae and are coughed up, swallowed and passed out in faeces, where they penetrate the feet of slugs and snails.

Happily, Charlie responded to treatment and recovered uneventfully. Maybe he was lucky after all.